Jordan Spieth ready to work with trip to Augusta coming up

Steve DiMeglio

Spieth finished fourth as the defending champion of the Hero World Challenge, firing a final-round 67 on Sunday at Albany Golf Club to finish at 20 under and five shots behind winner Bubba Watson. It capped a historical 2015 for Spieth, who won the Masters, US Open, The Tour Championship by Coca-Cola and two other events. He captured the FedExCup title and the $US10 million bonus, won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average, led the tour in earnings and was the PGA Tour player of the year.

But despite racking up 80,470 kilometres in the air the past two months — including a trip to Australia where he finished in a tie for second in the Australian Open — Spieth will head home to Dallas and then to Augusta, Georgia, next weekend to play some golf at Augusta National Golf Club, where he's sure to wear the green jacket he won in April.

He doesn't have any trips planned other than heading to Georgia before he'll head to Hawaii for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in January. But if the weather is nice in Dallas, he'll play plenty of golf.

"When it's nice out, I'll go out and play and practice," Spieth said. "Probably do a lot of playing. This is when everyone's in town and we can have some fun games. It's a fun time of the year to be home for the holidays."

Still, Spieth and caddie Michael Greller were relieved as the season came to an end as they walked up the 18.

Advertisement

"Michael and I had a nice talk after I hit my second shot walking in," Spieth said. "Michael said, 'Hey, man, it's been an honour to be in the passenger seat sitting shotgun for this ride this year. Thanks for everything.' I said, 'No, I mean obviously I thanked him. It's been a team effort this year just as we always stress. But yeah, there was certainly a sigh of relief."

Sometime this month, Spieth will sit down with his team and start formulating a plan heading into 2016. Spieth knows he's one tough act to follow.

"You don't accept a hangover, you know?" he said. "There's no reason I should. It's not like it was my first season out and just broke out and did that. It wasn't just this season. We played solid golf for three years and really competed in 40 some odd tournaments I had a chance to win on the weekend. That's really cool.

" ... I think these last two weeks, the fact that I didn't win when I had a chance may actually be a good thing for me. I'm going to look at it positively that you can't settle down, you've got to work a little bit harder. Everyone is obviously playing a high level of golf right now and they're going to carry that into next season. So if I want to stay at the top, I'm going to have to outwork them and that's going to be challenging."